Saturday, April 27, 2024

Recruits

Hoping to impress the governor and secure funding for a new freeway, the mayor of Clam's Cove announces a new civilian-led traffic enforcement division of the police force. Captain Magruder, attempting to embarrass the mayor, selects only the dumbest, drunkest and horniest recruits for this new squad. Recruits is less of a comedy and more of a delivery system for boobs. There isn't a shirt, towel or bikini top in the movie that can't be removed by a pratfall. I'm pretty sure that there's only one woman in the cast who doesn't show her boobs, but even she strips down to her underwear at one point. If Police Academy is too highbrow for you, then you just might be the perfect audience for Recruits.

Rating: 53%

(Recruits on IMDB)

Friday, April 19, 2024

Nightmare of Eden

The Empress, an interstellar cruise liner, comes out of warp off course and collides with another ship orbiting the planet Azure. The two ships are unstably merged together. The Doctor and Romana, responding to the distress signal, attempt to separate the two ships. Their plans are soon complicated when it's discovered that someone aboard the Empress is trying to smuggle a deadly drug known as Vraxoin. Nightmare of Eden is a painfully average serial. None of the characters are all that interesting, with the exception of Professor Tryst played by Lewis Fiander. Fiander goes pretty big with his performance and it adds some much needed energy to the proceedings. The Mandrels are a well designed monster that don't come across as all that menacing. And, finally, the most interesting ideas in Nightmare of Eden seem to have been lifted from the far superior story Carnival of Monsters.

Rating: Of course we should interfere%

Saturday, April 13, 2024

The Street Fighter

Terry Tsurugi is one mean S.O.B. And when I say that, I'm not trying to suggest that Terry is cold or gruff like so many other action movie protagonists often are. Early on in The Street Fighter, when a brother and sister can't pay Terry the money they owe him, he kills the brother and sells the sister into slavery. That's Terry for you, our "hero." As the movie goes on, there are some attempts to humanize Terry, but he remains pretty vicious and unrepentant throughout. The crux of the plot finds Terry taking on the Mob and the Yakuza after they try to kidnap a young heiress. The Street Fighter is a particularly violent movie. When it was released in the US, an early success for New Line Cinema, it received an X rating. The fight scenes are well shot, with great uses of long takes and slow motion. Sonny Chiba gets the full Bruce Lee treatment in his portrayal of Terry, with many loving shots of him training and cruelly dispatching scores of bad guys.

Rating: 73%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Saturday, April 6, 2024

The Transformers: The Movie

By 1986, Hasbro had already sold a lot of Transformers toys and they thought the best way to get kids to buy a bunch of new Transformers toys would be to kill off all of the characters that the kids had come to know and love. And so they made The Transformers: The Movie, which opens with an extended battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons in which many prominent characters are killed, including Optimus Prime. Yes, that's right. Not only did Hasbro think it was a great idea to kill off Optimus Prime, the flagship character of the Transformers brand, they thought that was something that kids needed to see on the big screen. And then, at some point later in the film, somebody says "shit." Because, you know, it was meant to be a movie that the whole family could enjoy.

Rating: 69%

(Image from Wikipedia)